Friday Reads Updates and Newbies

Hey friendlies! Sorry for the lack of posts this week- parent teacher conferences are Monday, so I've been catching up with grading and so forth. Therefore, Friday Reads has now been moved to Monday this week, and I may try to sneak another one in on Friday, since I will be on a blissful Thanksgiving break and will have extra time to read. As always, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@Colie025) and to tweet your own weekend reading material with the hashtag #fridayreads. You can also find me on Goodreads, where I keep an updated record of what I am reading.

As of the last Friday Reads post, I was reading The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer and Positively by Courtney Sheinmel. I have happily finished both of those books, and while both were good, neither left me wowed. In The Uncoupling, a town is inflicted with a mysterious burn out of sex drive as a classic Greek play with similar themes is being rehearsed for and performed. My reading tastes have been leaning toward the fantasy/sci-fi lately, so I was intrigued by the supernatural elements in this realistic fiction book. I loved some of the couples featured (the gym teacher with small children, the married teacher couple), but overall I found their motivations and actions a little unclear. This book may have benefited from having the author explore fewer couples' sexuality in a more in depth manner. I do have a few literary-fiction minded friends that I would recommend this to as a way to dab a toe into supernatural fiction, but overall I wasn't wowed in any significant way, nor did I come away with any new ideas- a sure sign that this wasn't what I had hoped it would be.

Sadly, I felt even more apathetic towardsPositively. While I appreciated that Sheinmel tackled a challenging subject and chose to write about a girl that is HIV positive and struggling with the death of her mother from AIDS. Emmy (the main character) really irritated me, and I found her sudden switch to being at peace with her disease and her mother's death after attending a camp for HIV positive girls unbelievable. I think Sheinmel could have done a better job making Emmy's story more realistic, and that it all ended a little too neatly at the end. I would have liked to see some more research evident in the story, and the side characters were a little flat. I'm glad I have the book to add to my YA library at school, but I don't think I will be strongly recommending it to many students. Rats.

Since these books, I've also finished The Night Circus (loved loved loved) and The Leftovers (also fab). This week, I'm pouncing on finishing Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (who I have a huge crush on) and Everwild by Neil Schusterman who is coming to our school in December. More reports on those later this week.

Happy Reading!

What are you reading? Do you like this bookish talk, or should I go back to my usual crazy antics? Are you a reader? Would you like to be?